Death threats against the executives of Euroclear, the Belgian financial giant depositary of a large part of the Russian assets frozen in EU territory; overflight of drones that force the closure of Brussels airport, court cases that will continue ‘ad infinitum’… The Russian State and prominent figures sympathetic to the Kremlin in community territory have embarked in recent months on a powerful campaign of intimidation to prevent the 210 billion euros immobilized under the jurisdiction of the European Union (EU) since the beginning of the invasion of ukraine be used to pay the costs derived from the war and finance the purchases of weapons that help the kyiv Government to stop the invasion. The Belgian Prime Minister himself has publicly admitted it on the ‘La Libre’ portal: “Moscow has let us know that, in the event of confiscation of the assets, Belgium and I personally were going to pay for it for eternity…”.
Oliver Huby, member of the board of directors of Mfex, a subsidiary financial entity of Euroclear, has been the main pillar of this intimidation campaign, as revealed by a recent investigation by Eurobserver, a publication specialized in EU issues. The financier has come to propose on several occasions to Valérie Urbainexecutive director of Euroclear, the depository entity of 185,000 of the 210,000 million euros immobilized in community territory, hold meetings with members of the Russian intelligence services in Geneva, after which demanded protection to the Belgian State, and when he did not obtain it, he hired his own bodyguard service.
The pressure moved later, in mid-2024to a second Euroclear executive who has asked to remain anonymous for security reasons, always according to the same sources, with the same demand to hold that meeting with his Russian intelligence contacts. By refusing to hold that meeting, he received threats such as that your pet could “die suddenly“or your house burn “in flames”. At the beginning of this year, this person was involved in an incident with violence in a bar, which Huby would have taken advantage of to resume his threats directed at Urbain. “You don’t want to end up like this,” he warned her. These incidents have forced Euroclear to hire the services of Amarantea major French personal security firm.
155 flights to Russia since 2014
According to the Dossier Center database, an NGO financed by the Russian opposition Mikhail KhodorkovskyHuby has flown in 155 occasions to Russia since 2014, the year of the annexation of Crimea, 15 of them since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. His wife, Annette, did it in 40 occasions in the same period. In addition, Huby is a member of the Russian Geographic Society (RSG), an entity not yet sanctioned by the EU that had its own president. Vladimir Putin and the former Minister of Defense, Shoigu Shoigu. Some of its regional branches abroad, such as the one operating in Norway, have been accused of recruiting agents of influence.
The intimidation campaign against Belgium has been seasoned with physical disruptionssuch as the repeated incidents caused by the overflight of drones in national territory in the vicinity of air bases and the Brussels airport, forcing its closure. “There is no doubt that these incidents are linked to the freezing of Russian assets,” the Estonian deputy assures EL PERIÓDICO. Riho Terras, of the European People’s Party (EPP) and commander of the Estonian Armed Forces between 2011 and 2018, ruling out that they have any relevance to the country’s security beyond the inconvenience caused. Born in 1967, this career soldier served in the USSR Army and knows closely the Soviet methods of intimidation, which do not differ excessively from those currently used by the Putin’s Russia. On several occasions, Russia has carried out threatening overflights or similar incidents at politically important moments, such as following the investigation into the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko in which the Russian State and its president were held responsible, or the visit of the president of the Spanish Government, Pedro Sanchez, to the Baltic countries.
Los court cases They constitute the latest cartridge that Moscow is using to prevent its immobilized money from ending up covering expenses derived from the invasion of the neighboring country. The Russian Central Bank has filed a lawsuit against Euroclear in a Russian court for $230 billion in damages and the first hearing in the case will be held this January. It constitutes the first step in turning the confiscation of assets into a “legal nightmare”, in the words of Russian representatives. MEP Terras downplays the gesture. “Their demands will have no effect on EU territory, in the same way that the demands against Putin have no effect on Russian territory,” he recalls.
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